Over a year and a half after tentatively winning $886 million in broadband funding from the government's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), SpaceX is still trying to get paid by the Federal Communications Commission. One problem for Starlink—though not the only problem—is a series of objections from satellite company Viasat, which says Starlink lacks the capacity and speed to meet FCC obligations.

In a new FCC filing, SpaceX denounced Viasat's "misguided campaign" against the Starlink funding. "Viasat is transparently attempting to have the Commission impede competition at all costs to protect its legacy technology," SpaceX told the FCC. The new SpaceX filing was submitted on Friday and posted to the FCC's website Monday, as pointed out by Light Reading.

But SpaceX might have struggled to get its funding even if Viasat never objected. Starlink was tentatively awarded $886 million in December 2020 by the FCC during the final weeks of Chairman Ajit Pai's tenure. Consumer advocacy group Free Press accused Pai of "subsidiz[ing] broadband for the rich," pointing out that Starlink was awarded money in urban areas including locations at or adjacent to major airports.

Starlink service isn't geographically restricted in the same way as wireline networks, but the RDOF and other programs require ISPs to bid on specific census blocks. Starlink won bids covering 642,925 homes and businesses in 35 states.

In addition to rural areas, SpaceX won "the right to serve a large number of very urban areas that the FCC's broken system deemed eligible for awards," Free Press said. A design flaw in the FCC's mapping system made it possible to bid on subsidies in census blocks that were "surrounded on all sides by fiber."